Willard Insane Asylum

Last weekend I had the unique opportunity to take a tour of the infamous Willard Insane Asylum, an experience I especially value now knowing that they will no longer be giving tours due to the incredible amount of people this year, and not to mention the damage they did...
Here are some rare photos I took from the inside of one of the condemned buildings.

Pictured here is a stray gurney among the peeling halls of the asylum, surrounded by several rooms, most of which were crumbling, but some of which still had pieces of furniture such as restraint chairs.

Here is one of the crumbling rooms, obviously destroyed by both time and trespassing visitors

A large eerie room, with nothing but part of an open desk, was probably used as a common room.

A room labeled as a treatment room, featuring two restraint chairs, commonly used on electroshock therapy, in which two electrodes are attached to the temples and various shocks are administered, usually in an effort to subdue bad behaviors.

lastly for this post, a lone television, dating from the 60's-70's sitting in the hallway in front of an empty treatment room.

Earliest Memory of a Haunting

Upon entering WISE class on this fine tuesday morning, Mr.Reiff alerted us of a Tuesday bonus post, in which we should tell of our first experience with our WISE topic. For me, that would be my first experience with the paranormal, or things of a haunted nature.

As I mentioned earlier I've been interested in the paranormal since I was in third grade. When I moved into the old Turback's mansion I had my first real experiences with things from the other side, or so I thought. I recall being spooked by the house since I moved in, maybe it was just the vast emptiness of the house, or maybe I had read too many ghost stories, but I never quite felt alone. The rooms were huge, and the light switches were always on one side of the room but not the other, so to me that meant turning the light off at night and sprinting through the dark room to get to the next one. It was always incredibly dark, due to the fact that there were no other houses outside to light up the area.  I had often pictured hands reaching out from the dark to grab me, but the majority of my experiences have actually taken place with the lights on. As it turns out, ghosts don't really care about the dark.

I often saw a bright blur go around a corner as I entered a room, but it became so common that I learned not to mind it. It was the other experiences that were out of the ordinary for me, one of the most vivid I remember was in the middle of winter in the master bedroom upstairs. There was a large window facing towards the back yard, and looking out into the forest behind the house could give anyone the creeps. But I recall the first time I saw a bright glowing orb outside. I had been sitting at the window staring out for no particular reason, when a bright ball of white left up in front of me, illuminating my face. It then floated a bit down and disappeared into nothing. My first thought was that it was a firefly or something, but the ground was completely covered in snow making it too cold for such  thing. After that I camped out under the window occasionally. Usually nothing happened, but a few times, when it was just late enough, I'd see it dance across the window, moving in zig-zag like patterns. I still have no idea what it was, but it continued to show up, move around for a bit, then disappear into thin air. That was probably my first real experience with the paranormal.